Lost Plumes
by YuiSinon
Summary: When the Skylark crashed, some knights crashed deeper than others. Some, are close to a rescue camp when they land, but some, are too far away from help, they are forced to survive and regroup the hard way. Join this single knight as she tries to regroup and contact Spiral HQ.


**When I came back to an old MMO I loved to play, I was immersed into it, liking the simple but challenging combat as well as the art style. Ideas swarmed my head from this game, and this idea was what I thought of the most. Enjoy.**

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I try to move my limbs as I realize I was stuck in a dark and damp layer of sediment. I strain my arms as I try to get my body free from my dirt prison in the ground. I manage to pop my head out and temporarily become blind from the newfound light glaring into my sockets. Meanwhile I wiggle myself out of the mound,caterpillar style, and adjust to the brightness. I dust the dirt and pebbles off of my faded brigandine as well as my twin plumes. My uniform was in a decent condition after what random accident that had occurred. Speaking of which, I can't actually remember what had happened; All I actually remember that happened was escaping from the Morai Wars with Captain Ozlo as well with the last of my kind. The Captain had found a massive energy signature resonating from a particular planet and had decided to host an operation to harvest the energy. And then... Bah, everything else seems to be a wall of static beyond that point in my mind.

My eyes widen with surprise as I look around to see an odd grassy landscape, and behind me, an escape pod.

"We must've had to leave the Skylark because of an emergency.." I say to myself out loud. "There must've been an attack or somehow the ship was badly damaged by something.."

I realized that I needed to contact Spiral HQ immediately so I can regroup with the others. I reached into my backpack and found that it was all empty; All I had on me was that exact backpack and the standard uniform I was wearing. I shoved my head into the pack and hoped that it wasn't empty after all, but sadly, it was.

"The Escape Pod...!" I gasp to myself while I stumbled towards it. Inside the pod were a few things that I immediately shoved inside my backpack. A Proto Sword and gun, there was also a shield, but it was smashed into several pieces when the pod hit the ground; This however did not stop me from shoving the large shards into my backpack. Fortunately there was a Spiral Contact Node as well; I immediately turned it on to try to get contact with HQ. Instead, I just see and empty screen accompanied a faint static noise from the contact node.

"It must not be getting a signal.." I sighed as I attached it to my left arm like a watch. I pushed a button on the side, and to my surprise as a map of the surrounding area had shown up accompanied with a radar beeping quietly every 2 seconds; The map itself wasn't complete however, it was only showing a small amount of the area around me. I took a few steps forward to see that the map had filled itself in a few steps to the east. Judging from the fact that there's a radar, it must be using radio waves to take and display data on the communicator.

Squish. Squash. Squish. I look up to see an odd pink cube creature a few meters in front of me. I walked towards it to get a better look; It was, from what I can tell, a semi fluid being. It was around the consistency of jello and was entirely pink to top it all off. I walked around it to look at it more, but, it flung itself against me like a projectile. It was- squishy, to say the least. The impact had left the affected area damp and bruised and the hard hit staggered me as well. I quickly picked myself up and reached inside my pack for my Proto Gun; I fired it to see that the shot seemingly bounced off the living jello cube and set it into a slight wobble. I dropped the gun back into my backpack and reached for the sword. I flailed at it with my newly acquired blade and saw that it bounced off the jello cube harmlessly; I raised an eyebrow and swung again, this time, with more force. I sliced through the middle of the cube and clean through. The "Jello Monster" now began wobbling violently as its body failed to keep its shape and turned into a puddle of whatever the hell it was made of.

I walked over the puddle of what I assume to be jello and saw that in the distance there were more of these jello creatures. I

did what any sane person would do; I chopped, slashed, and poked all of them until they were exactly like the one I had just killed a few minutes ago. Tired from the "slimeshed" I sat down to rest and gloat about the newly acquired victory. A thought had then occurred to me; If they look like jello, act like jello, and smell like jello, are they edible? I quickly bit into a chunk of jello from the group I had just slain and immediately regretted my decision. They tasted like mud that was put into jello consistency along with the taste of something had just farted on it a few seconds before I saw them. I spit them out in disgust as I wiped my mouth afterwards.

I had just walked a few more meters until I saw someone lying on the ground. It went to investigate and I saw that he was dead. A fearful look on my face came as I checked his corpse. There were bite marks almost everywhere, it was like he was chased down by a pack of beasts before he succumbed to his inevitable death to their hands. He was wearing what seemed to be a recon uniform accompanied with some broken equipment, I knew what he was since one of my roommates was a recon himself, and liked to pop out of nowhere to scare me occasionally. First of all, the shield that activated the cloak was heavily damaged, though the energy cell for the pack was still intact. The recon uniform like I said, was riddled with bite marks signifying that his death was from some creature. Lastly, he appeared to be holding a rapier type weapon. I had seen these from what those veteran knights seemed to be holding during daily sparring sessions. I picked up the rapier and swung it around; Surprised that it was rather light, I thrusted with it and found that it seemed to be as effective as I saw them to be. I quickly dropped it into my backpack. I looked over towards the shield and the energy cell; As I remembered, the shield itself was damaged, but the energy cell linked to the shield was intact. I picked the shield up and drew it closer; Unfortunately, half of the "cloaker" was in ashes, and the rest that wasn't in a pulp were in large shards. The cord linking it with the energy source however, was in great condition, along with the trigger that activated the link.

I pulled the trigger and to my surprise, it sparked healthily. I pulled the trigger once more to see that it sparked once again, instead of actually cloaking my body. In annoyance, I pulled the trigger once more; Fortunately, it had cloaked perfectly, only leaving a dark and semi-transparent outline of my figure. I let go and pulled out the remains of my Proto Shield. I had this idea where I thought I could patch up the cloaker with one of the leftover shards of my proto shield; It had clicked in place perfect, well, it wasn't THAT perfect, it looked a bit dodgy when you looked at it a bit more, but decent enough for it to not fall off.

I inspected the fallen recon once more to see that it attached to his right arm was a small device. Looking more closely at it, I saw that it said the words, "Depth 5." Depth 5? But I couldn't be down this far, I can obviously see that I have a ridiculous amount of sunligh- I looked up and was surprised. There were islands floating above me with gears and cogs rumbling and turning on the bottoms.

"What the hell..?" I scratch my head in confusion. How does this even work? There couldn't be floating islands.. Nothing could be holding them up without somehow counteracting gravity itself. I couldn't be in space; I can still breath.

Rrrrrrr... I look to my left. I could see something emerging from the grass to the next of me. A baseball sized puff-ball came bouncing out of the patch of grass, purring at me aggressively. This did not however, stop me from picking it up and nuzzling my cheek against it. The fur was something smooth- very smooth- like what a newborn would be covered with in blanket form to give them warmth. The living dust ball did something that made me regret the decision I had just made merely seconds ago; It sunk its teeth into my hand. I screamed in agony as I dropped the dust ball and held my hand in pain.

"What the hell is your problem?!" I yelled angrily.

The creature began purring at me once more. I heard things move and rustle in the grass behind the puff-ball. There was also a notably loud purring sound from the patch of grass. Out came more and more of those things purring at me like the first one did. I stared at them in fear as more and more emerged. I immediately picked up my newly formed "Proto Cloaker" and cloaked at once. There was no way I would stay here, So I ran off quickly hoping to not be trailed by the angry puff-balls. Fortunately, my hopes came true and the puff-balls just stood there, confused. I made my way for only 25 meters when the cloaker immediately shut off.

"W-what?" I gasped. I check the shield as well as the trigger to see that it was perfectly fine, like I had last seen. I inspected the energy cell instead and found one small detail that I had missed; The cell was cracked, limiting the total amount of time I could be cloaked to only less than half of the total minutes it could normally do. This means that I have to make sure that I could get out of the situation with this bare amount of cloak time. This was probably also the reason the recon was killed, due to the fact that he had damaged his cloaker. I sighed in grief as I realized my chances of survival in the long run was reduced due to this one cause.

In the distance I heard turning cogs, like there was some piece of machinery running. The thought of the clockwork islands popped back up. There must be a camp of my fellow knights somewhere; They must have a better way to contact Spiral HQ... The question is, how do I get there? I became lost in thought about how I would even get there. Then- in the corner of my eye- I saw it. There was a machine running, causing all that noise. I walked towards it and saw that it was a platform. In the terminal linked to the platform showed a simple picture of a green island.

"Aha!" I said in triumph. I stepped on and to my surprise- the platform started moving downwards- like an elevator.


End file.
